"Language is not an invention. As best we can tell it is an evolved feature of the human brain… Writing is an altogether different and artificial thing." Spoken and written languages are processed in different brain centers. The story is actually about the history of written language (at a very high level), but it has a neat graphic. (Grokked from Dan)
"The asteroid-orbiting OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has released some of its most detailed images yet of its target, the asteroid Bennu."
"'We believe that when flu season comes around, you should be able to get sick on your terms,' reads the Vaev website. 'We're not about chemicals or prescription drugs here at Væv. We believe using a tissue that carries a human sneeze is safer than needles or pills.'" Proving once more that people with money are dumb (for both buying this, and well as sponsoring this.
"Leaving Neverland is a new two-part documentary that follows two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck (now in their thirties), who say they were sexually abused in the 1990s by Michael Jackson. The four-hour documentary debuted at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25. The film was met with statements from the Jackson Estate (who called it 'a tabloid character assassination') and Jackson’s family (who called Robson and Safechuck 'perjurers' and the film a 'public lynching')."
"'The Arctic is currently warming two to three times faster than the rest of the globe, so naturally, glaciers and ice caps are going to react faster,' Simon Pendleton, lead author and a doctoral researcher in CU Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), said in a statement." We're boned.
"Two-thirds of the continental United States will be a frozen ice box Tuesday, as the so-called polar vortex of frigid arctic air spins across the U.S. Midwest, clips the Great Lakes, the Ohio Valley and pushes on into New England." Hey, you know what's happening at the pole as the coldest air that should be right over it at this time has decided to move over the North American continent? :: makes ta-da hand wave ::
"What happened when Oslo decided to make its downtown basically car-free?… It was a huge success: Parking spots are now bike lanes, transit is fast and easy, and the streets (and local businesses) are full of people." Although in the US the success of "walking streets" is a little more mixed, but then we also still consider them an anomaly (where as car filled streets are a fairly recent invention). Hell, even on Mackinac Island, which bans motorcars (they still have some, like the ambulance), I was admonished by a cop to stay on the sidewalk (I replied if she would keep traffic moving on the sidewalk I would happily stay there, but when everybody stops there's only one way around, she laughed and didn't give me a ticket). (Grokked from someone, sorry, lost the link)
"A Japanese hotel that became known as the 'world's first robot hotel' three years ago is powering off many of its robots. It turns out that guests prefer humans to handle their requests." The robot uprising will be postponed until v3.2 is ready.
"Pacific Gas and Electric has filed for bankruptcy protection after coming under pressure from billions of dollars in claims tied to deadly wildfires." PG&E responds to criticism by saying, hey, you know that better system we knew we should have been building out since the 70s? Yeah, since you're making us do it I guess we'll do it now.
How goes Brexit? "If May can't break the deadlock, Britain will leave the world's biggest trading bloc without a deal on March 29. In the event of a chaotic 'no-deal' Brexit, the Bank of England has warned the country's economy could shrink by as much as 8 percent in about a year." Ah, in the same place we were. Whispers, hey Britain, for that thorny issue of Northern Ireland, how about you make NI a free trade zone, and put the barriers in place at the ports back to Britain? It'll be a regulatory and tax pain-in-the-arse, but it'll be better than dividing the island once again.
"For one Ohio town, Trump's trade policies bring uncertainty and hope." Well, it's more like the largest county in Ohio, but you know what they mean. There's so much I could talk about here, inside baseball and all. But I'll just comment that some of these problems are self-inflicted wounds of business decisions made back in the 90s and 00s. The county is struggling still. Ashtabula city continues to bleed population. Villages like Orwell struggle to keep business (and to encourage them to expand and make upgrades during the good times). The owners of Welded Tubes could have doubled their output in the 00s, but doing so would have meant hiring a compliance officer to handle the increased regulations of businesses over 100 employees. The owners obstinately refused to do that even though we offered help.
"The U.S. is imposing sanctions on Venezuela's state-owned oil company in an attempt to dislodge President Nicolás Maduro in favor of his rival, Juan Guaidó." Mnuchin says this won't hurt US gas prices. Let me call bullshit right now. In 2017 Venezuela was the number 4 oil importer to the US making up about 7% of our oil consumption.
"Tech entrepreneurs have long prided themselves on disrupting traditional industries and creating new ones." Now that philosophy of "move fast, break things" is being questioned. I can't help but think this is the same mental gymnastics that allow people who move somewhere to suddenly be against other people moving in. Now that technology companies have replaced those industry giants they're realizing they are also ripe for disruption (obsolescence) and they aren't happy with being on the other end of the lollipop.
"The Justice Department unsealed criminal charges against China's most important telecommunications company on Monday, in a deepening of the ongoing geopolitical chill across the Pacific Ocean." The US calls shenanigans on Chinese company Huawei.
"Donald Trump has built his presidency on attacking undocumented immigrants. At the same time, his properties have relied on the labor of people who are not in the country legally. After newspapers began reporting on this contradiction, Trump properties started firing those workers. The Washington Post says just 10 days ago, the Trump National Golf Club in New York's Westchester County fired around a dozen people who'd worked there for years." This isn't just hypocrisy, the staff at Trump properties knew they were hiring undocumented workers and helped them obtain forged documents.
"There are problems with hiring and retention at Border Patrol and ICE that pre-exist the Trump administration. Especially for Border Patrol, it's really difficult for them to hold on to the agents that they have. They're incredibly low-paid. They're stationed often at these isolated places along the border. In terms of sort of morale or how people view it as an agency to work for within the federal government, it's one of the lowest-ranked." They're not sending their best people.
"Five Houston police officers were taken to the hospital following a shootout Monday evening as they tried to serve a search warrant on a house in the southeastern part of the city as part of a drug raid. Four of the officers were shot and one other was injured during the exchange that left two suspects dead, according to police." And then Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said, "'This evening’s horrific attack on police officers is a solemn reminder of the service and sacrifice our brave men and women in law enforcement make every day to keep us safe…'" Dear Gregory, I think you intentionally misunderstood this story and tried a very bad spin on it to use the injuries these officers suffered in the line of duty to advance you political agenda.
Why the shutdown, any government shutdown, is a bad idea. "Most investigations were put on hold when workers were dismissed. But 22 investigations never even began. That includes 15 aviation accidents resulting in 21 fatalities; three marine accidents; two railroad accidents causing two fatalities; and two highway accidents, which killed seven people."
"There is no evidence that '18 million illegal immigrants' received 'government checks' during the government shutdown this month, contrary to Facebook posts." In fact, there's no evidence the estimated 11 million people in this country without papers received any federal checks at all.
"The National Nuclear Security Administration says production of the weapon, known as the W76-2, has begun at its Pantex Plant in the Texas Panhandle. The fact that the weapon was under production was first shared in an e-mail to the Exchange Monitor, an industry trade magazine, and independently confirmed by NPR." There is no such thing as a limited or winnable nuclear exchange. Any nuclear detonation would escalate to a full exchange by all the nuclear powers. Which means the end of the world as we know it. The only chance for it to not lead there would be for one of the powers to accept destruction and put the world ahead of their national interests. Fat chance of that ever happening.
Jim Wright on the precision of Trump's lies. There's a writing rule about how being precise helps sell the lie. Government numbers, specifically the numbers the president cites, are hardly ever that specific.
Those precise numbers? "'We are not even into February and the cost of illegal immigration so far this year is $18,959,495,168. Cost Friday was $603,331,392. There are at least 25,772,342 illegal aliens, not the 11,000,000 that have been reported for years, in our Country. So ridiculous! DHS,' Trump tweeted Jan. 27." The president is full of shit.
Related: "Texas officials say that nearly 100,000 non-citizens may be on the state's voter rolls. Voting rights groups say the list is misleading and the motivations behind a roll purge are largely political." Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
"Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation is 'close to being completed,' Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said on Monday." Yeah, I've heard that before.
Tweet of my heart: @petridishes When You Do What You Love You Will Never Be Permitted To Vacation A Day In Your Life (Grokked from Kelly Link)
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